Messages

1

Beginners / sikudo → sīkudo?

« on: January 12, 2015, 09:23:30 am »

Hi,

The vocab list has a number of quotations of this:

    Dāria Sikudo Dārȳti Vestero — the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros

Should it be <i>sīkudo</i> with a long [i:], or is there some process that shortens it?

2

Beginners / Re: Interpuncts in the vocabulary list

« on: April 30, 2014, 10:21:28 am »

No it's ok, if you don't dig them, I don't want to make the page more clunky I already add the interpuncts to my flashcards, and that's good enough by me!

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Beginners / Re: Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 30, 2014, 06:23:35 am »

Perfect sense, thanks! That's a cool feature.  I'm relieved that the accent does shift; I had found [aː.'no.ɡaːɾ] quite awkward to pronounce.

And yes, our de = from, of  (Incidentally I've recently learned that the Tupi locative postposition pe can mean either "at" or "towards".  No relation to anything, it just came to mind ).  But when I say sou do Brasil "I'm from Brazil" I somehow don't feel that as "locative", in the way I would in vim do Brasil "I came from Brasil".   Guess I thought of origin relationships, "from [Country], of the [Country], [Country]an", as genitive; and thus missed the regency of hen.  It all gets a lot simpler if I just keep in mind that hen asks for locative.

Would a more literal translation for hen Valyrio Uēpo ānogār iksan be "I'm from Old Valyrian blood" (since Valyrio uēpo is gen.  and ānogār loc.)?

4

Beginners / Interpuncts in the vocabulary list

« on: April 29, 2014, 07:28:04 am »

I like interpuncts (·) to separate roots from inflections in my vocabularies.  Do you think this would be a feature worthy adding to the Wiki vocabulary page (even though it's possible to infer the root from other information)? (Mad Latinist, your opinion?)

The one downside I can think of is that it makes it a bit harder to ctrl+f for full words (though a bit easier to ctrl+f for inflected forms, as you can easily see that the root is matching).

If you guys think it's a good idea, I'd add them myself.

5

Beginners / Re: Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 29, 2014, 06:38:43 am »

What is your native language?

That would be Brazilian Portuguese

Quick question: "Blood" is listed as ānogar, but "Fire and Blood" as well as "of the blood of Old Valyria" have ānogār (tow long ās).  But the only -ār ending in 1aq is the locative? Why not nom. and gen., respectively?

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Beginners / Re: Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 04, 2014, 07:55:14 pm »

Ok, he said that yes, it would be zaldrīzītsun for "a few little dragons" (nom.). David also said that

while you could say hāri zaldrīzin [number + paucal], it would be more natural to say either hāri zaldrīzesse [number + plural] or zaldrīzin [paucal] by itself.

So I guess "a few little dragons" are ok, but "three little dragons" would be better as hāri *zaldrīzītssa…  (I wonder if I can say Dænero zaldrīzītsun issi litsi ? Guess I just want to use the paucal… )

7

Beginners / Re: Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 04, 2014, 05:51:55 pm »

Hey Mad Latinist, thank you so much for the work on the wiki (and the detailed comments on DJP's blog, et cetera).  I really appreciate it; you efforts translated into hours of entertainment for me

I thought I explain at least the material in my first paragraph over at [[High Valyrian Verb Conjugation]]. I should look it over again to see how it can be made more clear. Any suggestions? It's difficult, since I am essentially the only writer on the Valyrian languages over at the wiki, so it can be difficult for me to tell if I'm being clear or not.

I read it again and yes, the opening table plus the Present Active first paragraph are clear enough; I blame myself for skimming the page too lightly.  I think I must have jumped directly to the "Aorist" sub-heading, and (as you've guessed) the tense name interfered with my previous knowledge of the word in a Greek context.  (In my defense, I think I've skimmed the Wikipedia entry too, and it says that “in these [IE] languages the aorist is usually a form that expresses perfective aspect and often refers to past events. It is thus comparable in meaning to what is called the preterite in grammars of some languages.”—and in my native language we do use "preterite" for past tense).

Perhaps what would have saved lazy me would be a brief re-statement of the semantics on the Aorist sub-heading, and an explicit note that it's not like the Greek/IE "past tense aorist" but the "gnomic aorist".  On second thought, I should add those myself…

I decided it was safer to use abbreviations on the wiki.

Yeah, I used the astronomical symbols in my Anki flashcards only to find they don't show up in the mobile (Android) version—even though I had previously installed the Junicode font for runes and such.  It's a shame that, in this age of cheap processing, we still can't even rely on having a full Unicode set in all devices.

Feel free to ask DJP

Will do.  Thanks for the detailed answer!

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Beginners / Re: Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 03, 2014, 09:35:28 am »

Also, I just noticed tāemitsos which is stated to be a diminutive, and it's 3☉ as I'd expect. But why short  -itsos and not -ītsos…?

9

Beginners / Questions: Aorist, Class II stems, diminutives

« on: April 01, 2014, 10:09:53 am »

Hi! I'm just taking my first look at High Valyrian and I have some noob questions:

1. When should the aorist tense be used, as opposed to perfect? Is it the thing where aorist is punctual, and perfect implies continuing state? Or something else?

2. Quoting the wiki:

The vast majority of Class II stems end in j, l, n, ñ, or r. There seem to be some rare exceptions to this rule, but thus far none are known. Stems may end in multiple consonants, e.g. mirre "any," morghe "dead."

2a. In morgh-, cited in the same paragraph, the "two consonants" are /r/ and /ɣ/, right? So when we say that "no exceptions are known" to the /j, l, n, ñ, r/ rule, do we mean just one of the consonants of the cluster?

2b. Litse "beautiful" in the vocabulary is listed as a Class II stem.  Is that correct? If so, isn't it one of the exceptions?

3. I'm in doubt about where the stem ends to form diminutives.  Please tell me that zaldrīzes + ītsos becomes cute Spanish-like zaldrīzītsos

4.

From the wiki vocabulary:

zokla, 1☽ → zoklītsos, 2☉
riña, 1☽ → riñītsos, 3☉

Is the class of zoklītsos a mistake, given that "second declension nouns have the stem vowel -y"? Since third declension has -o, it looks better for -ītsos nouns…

Assuming 3. above is correct, would Dænerys' three little dragons in nom. paucal be zaldrizītsun?